I thought it was a pretty good article. he made some good points and ending with an anecdote that indicated he understood that ultimately the best approach depends entirely on the specific situation.

some people really need to get a life.

worldsSmallestViolin
September 1st, 2006 4:52am

I couldn't see much wrong with that article. Sound advice.

Colm
September 1st, 2006 4:55am

I think it's an awful article, just rambling on and on and on; no longer about how smart Joel is as a genius programmer, cause we're all bored of that by now. Now he's a genius mindreader, knowing that shitloads of python/java/php/ruby fanboys will flame him if he doesn't pat them on the head.

If it wasn't daddy, there'd be no use even complaining about it.

The cliff notes:

* if you want to run a serious software business, it doesn't matter what technology you use, so long as it's mainstream. Java, .Net, Php and Python are mainstream.

* Fuck off! Ruby and lisp suck, Paul Graham isn't half as smart or gay as I am. Joel is entirely east coast baby. Did I mention ruby and smalltalk suck too? How do I know? I'm Joel. Your "quaint" little language might be the shits at MIT, but that doens't cut the mustard in New York City, we do industrial style programming here.

* So you programmed a DNA sequencer in OCAML as part of your dissertation, but that's not exactly a GoToMyPc clone now, is it.

* lisp is entirely irrelevant no matter what you say. DON'T USE IRRELEVANT NICHE LANGUAGES, ok?

* by the way, we use our own language that we wrote ourselves that has an incredibly cool, metro-urban name: WASABI. Don't do this yourselves, though, because you're just not as smart as we are. Anyway, it's totally mainstream, because we're REALLY successful...

* Did I mention that we have a bunch of interns who are way smarter than you, Bill Gates, Linux Torvalds, that Russian math dude and Bjarne Stroustroupe put together?

* Here at FogCreek, we have sooo much money that we buy books with the sole intention of throwing them away. That's how things are done in New York, but you wouldn't know that, would you?

* And that's just the first sentence.

As usual, the average length of a sentence is about 80 words. Sentences and paragraphs aren't really metrosexual. I bet you can get REALLY great sushi just around the corner from FogCreek AND you'll meet a crazy homeless transsexual singing Streisand tunes on the elevator.

You actually READ that article and gleaned enough from it to call Joel a hypocrite? The whole thing is a fluff piece dragged on WAAAAAAY too long. I couldn't go more than a few paragraphs before my brain threatened to strangle me.

for once, I agree with mupp. The Spolabi has long ago run out of material, and is coasting. Big time.

$--
September 1st, 2006 8:12am

>You guys are sycophantic about some irrelevant loudmouth's articles, and Joel, being a HUGE narcissist, is loving it.

Would you call me a sycophant of Joel's? I've criticized him loudly and publicly quite a few time in recent history, such that he once descended from the heavens to pronounce his disappointment that I had strayed from the flock.

Nonetheless, I think this is classic Joel, and is one of the best pieces he's put out in a while - It's simple, pragmatic, and fairly to the point.

Nonetheless I am amazed that Joel is willing to take on the-

-Ruby community, which is frothing at the mouth at this.

-Paul Graham fan club, which comprises about 95% of Reddit. The mild digs at Paul were incredibly surprizing, as Joel seemed to be a fan of Paul's, and has a close relationship to Paul's bastard child Reddit.

Kudos to Joel for having the balls.

Of course the Wasabi bit at the end was...odd.

Dennis Forbes
September 1st, 2006 9:14am

You're sycophantic about criticizing him. It's like going to the supermarket in the next town over once a week to tell the Produce Manager what a jerk he is, and then posting about it on the internet.

>It's not as if, absent prompting, you wouldn't have piped up about it anyway.

Here's the thing, muppet: Joel isn't some random guy with a blog -- instead he's a guy who writes something, it appears all over Reddit, much less frequently on Digg and Slashdot, and we have coworkers and peers who then reference it to us. When someone has that sort of influence (although it has greatly subsided), you can't just stick your head in the sand and cover your ears. You also don't have to look for it to find it slapping you in the face all day long.

But anyways, no I wouldn't have commented on this particular article. It's not really super insightful or new information, nor is it saying something retarded (like that idiotic piece about Dell/IBM). The only discussable piece is whether that Wasabi bit was serious or not...which is debatable.

Dennis Forbes
September 1st, 2006 9:29am

The reason he has any influence or scope is that morons like you KEEP PAYING ATTENTION TO HIM.

That is what the word means, but as I don't read this forum, kissing my ass here isn't kssing my ass for real.

Joel Spolsky
September 1st, 2006 9:57am

>The reason he has any influence or scope is that morons like you KEEP PAYING ATTENTION TO HIM.

Many of his earlier pieces are, quite simply, brilliant. They made valuable, informative points, doing so in an easy to read, humorous fashion. I pointed many people to many of those pieces, and think they're excellent reads today. The fundamental points were well known and obvious, but it really amplified their core concepts to many people.

His early influence was very well earned.

So that early momentum carried his influence through some terrible literary abortions, so if you're active in the industry you -can't help- but get faced by his thoughts. If you disagree with him, and someone says "Oh, but Joel says...", the general norm is to voice your disagreement.

This really isn't rocket science.

And anyways, you're so in love with Joel that you have his picture custom printed on your toilet paper.

Dennis Forbes
September 1st, 2006 9:59am

>The reason he has any influence or scope is that morons like you KEEP PAYING ATTENTION TO HIM.

Yeah, that's what I thought, but I didn't want to point it out because it would only encourage him

Nice going, jackass.

Colm
September 1st, 2006 11:02am

The wasabi bit was definitely curious, because it's essentially exactly what he was criticizing in the entire rest of the article. To the best of my knowledge September 1 isn't a big day for practical jokes, so it didn't make a lot of sense.

The earlier points made a lot of sense. Even though my own preference is C programming, agree with his assertion that ISAPI applications written in C are a really bad idea. I've seen it in action. It was horrible. Now CGI programs written in C, on the other hand, those are pretty straight forward affairs that give you huge amounts of flexibility. Need to fix a bug? Copy the new executable into place and it's good.